The Origin of Everything: NOTHING

Lawrence Kraus delivers an amazing talk on cosmology. He brings us up to date on our latest understanding of the universe -- while getting in a few jabs at God. This is a MUST watch . . . even though it runs over an hour. Absolutely the most informative hour I've spent in my life.

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INFINIVERSE
The one universe that we know has existed since the Big Bang (which is Lawrence Kraus's start of time following an implied quantum-physical void seething with virtual particle states);
but quantum mechanics implies an eternal cycle of universes by the argument that I gave above.
This is why I have suggested before that our Universe is part of a greater scheme which I call an Infiniverse.

In the begining there was (someone-God) or In the begining there was (something-nature). It's the same either way, you have a force/energy at the begining. It would seem to me that you can't keep traveling back in time, whether there is a universe to determine time or not. Otherwise you could have never gotten to this moment.

Yes, that's very close to what I used to advocate . . . but you assume a beginning. I've assumed there's NO beginning: the First Law of Thermodynamics clearly states that something can't come from nothing.

Now, here comes Lawrence and he upsets my apple cart. He says there's a beginning. But, after spending some time thinking about it, I don't think he's really addressed origins at all.

The way I see it, a universe with a beginning and a universe with no beginning are both equally improbable and illogical. Essentially, you're facing an infinite recursion or infinity itself. Either some timeless force created the universe or the universe has always existed.

The bottom line is: it's cleaner to cut out the timeless creator force.

In this context (begining) doesn't imply creation to me. I'm talking about where it starts, and there being no moment before, no time before, no something before, no nothing before either. Your right, you can't make something from nothing, so there must have been something. And, even if time kept re-occuring, it must start somewhere...doesn't it? Forget a multiverse for the moment, even if our universe always existed. it still moves and changes. Isn't time just a way of measuring from one occurence to the next occurence, no matter how it's measured. The clocks movement has to start/begin somewhere, but you still need a clock for the hands to start moving. ???

It IS possible to test for the multiverse. One of the first experiments set for the LHC includes a test for particles indicating a multiverse. As far as I know, it's the first experiment specifically hoping for such evidence. Just as we "knew" there were atoms, neutrinos and black holes long before we could prove them, we can also "know" about the multiverse if the predictions about it are proven consistently: the same way we know there must be dark matter out there.

As for infinity, there's an infinity of whole numbers, an infinity of odd numbers, an infinity of even numbers, an infinity of prime numbers and there's even an infinity of fractions BETWEEN numbers. Think of the universe as the infinity between numbers and the multiverse as the infinity of prime numbers (or whole, odd or even ones).

I can agree that it's hard to get one's mind wrapped around the concepts of infinity and eternity but that's not a valid reason to deny them.

There's another kind of infinity that deals with the universe folding in on itself. I consider this to be a virtual form of infinity in as much as one can mentally step outside it to see that it is actually finite (spherical, looped, saddle-shaped, or whatever). From within, it might as well be infinite.

And as far as time goes, no matter how far back (or forward) you go, there's no logical reason not to go further. We can't imagine true eternity. Does that mean it can't exist?

The notion of a zero energy universe would preserve the First Law. I had assumed that quantum fluctuations must occur in equilibrium, across the universe, in order to preserve the First Law. However, somebody, earlier, stated that the First Law is only briefly violated by quantum fluctuations until the particle pairs annihilate themselves. I don't like that notion because violated is violated . . . time spans are relative.

But the pairs don't always annihilate each other. Some are probabilistically bound to escape immediate annihilation and combine with another particle that has also escaped annihilation. In order for the First Law to be maintained valid, these "escapee combinations" would also need to occur in equilibrium across the universe . . . wouldn't they?